The
US administration and Israel are accelerating their coordinated meddling
in the internal Palestinian divide between the Fatah-led presidency and
the Hamas-led government to preempt a series of Arab mediation efforts,
the latest of which is a UAE-Syrian try according to a member of the
Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The PLO official, who preferred to remain
anonymous, said that President Mahmoud Abbas authorized the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) to negotiate with Syria on behalf of Hamas, whose politburo
chairman, Khaled Misha’al, is based in Damascus, a draft for forming a
Palestinian national unity government on the basis of the national
consensus document (the prisoners’ document), recognizing the PLO by
Hamas, and respecting the accords signed by the PLO with Israel.

However the undeclared UAE-Syrian
effort-in-the-offing seems to have been overtaken by the latest Israeli-US
moves to foil Arab mediation. Faced practically with choosing between
national unity and lifting the Israeli-US siege, the PLO leadership has
opted to give priority to the second option, a choice that led it to
voluntarily accept bypassing the Palestinian government by visiting
western leaders and diplomats, to turn a blind eye to the western
diplomatic boycott imposed on this government and to receive selective
“humanitarian aid” through the PA presidency.

Within this context, Abbas met with the
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem on Saturday in a
long-awaited summit, during which Olmert only “promised” to release $100
million out of more than $600 million illegally held by Israel as a
“humanitarian” gesture, but failed to agree on a prisoner swap and
deferred to joint committees the Palestinian demands of releasing some of
more than 10,000 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails -- including the
Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and more then 60
cabinet ministers and lawmakers -- the easing of West Bank travel military
restrictions and increasing the traffic through the main cargo crossing
between Gaza Strip and Israel.

The meager results of the meeting won’t lift
or essentially alleviate the year-long tight economic and financial siege.
Expressing Moscow's support for Abbas' efforts to resolve the crisis
through national consensus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a
press conference in Moscow last week that foreign interests had “knowingly
and deliberately intervened to thwart the Palestinian dialogue on the
formation of a national unity government.”

The question now is not of getting the
Israelis and Palestinians to talk, but of getting the Palestinians to talk
to each other so they can talk to others.

Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa
canceled a plan for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers on
Monday to resolve the inter-Palestinian crisis after conferring with the
Palestinian president. Abbas “told me that there are mediations by some
Arab states which may lead to a result and progress in (solving) the
Palestinian crisis,” he said.

The Palestinian unity government would be
anathema to Israel and timing of Olmert’s move and other U.S moves leave
no doubts about their aim to preclude Arab mediation, thwart the potential
for a successful Palestinian dialogue, and suggest reasons other than
those mentioned by Mousa and Abbas for shelving the Arab League plans.

Egypt, Qatar and Yemen are heavily involved
in mediation with the rival Palestinian factions. A Qatari mediation
effort was foiled in October by the PLO insistence on Hamas’ commitment to
the Israeli-initiated, US and Quartet-adopted conditions.

The Israeli interest in “thwarting”
Palestinian dialogue is self-evident. However, the US “thwarting” efforts
unilaterally and through international forums need elaboration. On
Thursday, President George W. Bush signed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism
Act barring direct US aid to the “Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority”
(PA) as long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, renounce violence and
recognize existing agreements.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is
expected in Israel and the PA in January, said she would ask the Congress
for $100 million to “strengthen the security forces” of the PA loyal to
Abbas. But strengthen these forces against whom?

Also as part of western efforts to shore up
Abbas and further tighten siege on Hamas, the Quartet of the US, the UN,
the EU and Russia has backed the continuation for three months of the
Temporary International Mechanism to provide aid directly to the
Palestinian people by bypassing the Hamas-led Government.

Hamas considers forming a national unity
government the right approach to lifting the siege, and not vice versa.
Without consensus and prior consultation, the Islamic Resistance Movement
fears a crackdown in Abbas’ call on December 16 for early presidential and
legislative election and has welcomed and invited Arab mediation efforts
to alleviate its fears, which are vindicated by the Israeli and US
incessant calls on Abbas to dismantle it or pressure it into accepting the
Israeli conditions, which the Quartet adopted as preconditions to lift the
siege.

Hamas is now insisting on Israeli
reciprocity, an overdue Palestinian demand and a principle that the PLO
should have set as a precondition since Israel showed its bad faith when
it sliced Jerusalem out of the rest of the Palestinian territories
occupied in 1967 immediately after signing the Declaration of Principles
in Washington in 1993, but especially after extremists in 1995
assassinated the Israelis’ hero of peace, Yitzhak Rabin, which carried the
right to power ever since.

The PLO has demilitarized to more than 90%,
according to Abbas, the six-year old Intifada, and practically brought the
demilitarized uprising to a standstill too, while incessantly repeating
its willingness to immediately go into unconditional negotiations with the
Israel.

Late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat led
the PLO and his Fatah movement to a mutual recognition with Israel,
renounced violence and revoked the Palestinian National Charter, and
reinforced the autonomy of the PA, which he got in return, with “state
security courts” in order to swiftly punish the “enemies of peace” with
Israel; in 1996, more than 2000 of those “enemies of peace” were
imprisoned and tortured. His successor Abbas condemned their violent
anti-occupation resistance as terrorist acts.

Both men received nothing in return for all
their “good will.” They were disavowed as no partners in the deadlocked
peace process. Israel besieged Arafat in his own office in the West Bank
town of Ramallah for three years until his death on November 11, 2004,
suspiciously by poison. Their signed accords were all violated by Israel
who reoccupied their autonomous gains as the Israeli state terrorism
against their people continue to this day unabated, rendering all their
peace endeavors counterproductive and futile and leading to Hamas’
landslide electoral victory.

For years, Israel had been leaving no stone
unturned in its effort to precipitate a Palestinian civil war. In the
early days after the Oslo Accord, it pressurized Arafat to crack down on
Hamas, but he did not fall into the Israeli trap. Abbas also evaded
falling into the trap by insisting on dialogue to maneuver Hamas into
ceasefire through joining the political process, leading Israelis to
accuse him of “dialogue with terror,” and successfully averted infighting,
but the tight siege imposed on the PA since Hamas’ electoral victory in
January 2006 seems to be loosening his resolve.

Should the US and Israel push the Hamas-led
government to the wall, they may trigger a third Palestinian Intifada,
Misha’al had warned in Cairo. Should the Palestinian divide be denied Arab
mediation and further fueled to slide into a civil war the
Palestinian-Israeli peace process would be deferred indefinitely and none
in the proximity would be spared the repercussions.

Mediation by marginal PLO factions, Egypt
and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) secured last week a
ceasefire in the low key infighting in the Gaza Strip, which claimed more
than 325 lives and more than 4,000 wounded in 2006, according to Abbas,
but the national dialogue is still deadlocked.

Under the pressures of the potential risks
of an escalating Palestinian crisis, King Abdullah II on Tuesday
contravened Jordan's unannounced boycott of the Hamas-led government, and
in clear divergence from the all-demanding declared policy of the
country’s US strategic ally, invited Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail
Haniyeh for a joint summit in Amman, but his royal invitation has yet to
be honored.

However the UAE’s and Syrian middle ground
between Hamas and Fatah and Palestinian presidency and government
qualifies both countries for a successful mediation.

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad arrived in
the UAE on Dec. 18, flying in from Yemen, and held three meetings with
President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan; the next day, he met with
his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow and told reporters that
“Syria backs the Palestinian national unity through forming a Palestinian
national unity government.”

Briefing reporters on the Russian vision of
the Palestinian issue, President Assad said, “in fact . . . The Russian
vision on Palestine is a detailed, objective and real vision and we fully
agree with it . . . it is a vision based on the Palestinians' unity.”

Assad's earlier talks in Yemen with
President Ali Abdullah Saleh also discussed mediating the Palestinian
divide, two days after the arrival in Sanaa of US assistant secretary for
Near Eastern affairs, David Welch, for talks with President Saleh. “I'll
leave it to President Saleh to convey their views to President Assad,”
Welch said. “They know the views of the United States,” Asia Times
online quoted him as saying on Dec. 22.

Should the Bush administration reconsider
its currently known “views” of the Palestinian divide and engage Syria
instead of alienating it, as recommended by the Baker-Hamilton report, to
initiate a US-Syrian understanding that could allow Damascus, hand in hand
with Abu Dhabi, to break through the Hamas-Fatah divide, history could be
replayed to avert a Palestinian civil war as it had put an end to the
Lebanese civil war in the seventies of the last century. It could
potentially make the resumption of the peace process closer on both the
Palestinian and Syrian tracks of peace talks with Israel.

Nicola Nasser
is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the
Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.